Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 8:40-59
As for leading us beginning of the service, we'll sing a few more songs at the end. There's an outline in your bulletin. If you'd like to follow along, we're in the Gospel of Luke. So you can find Luke chapter eight in your Bible. The stories that we're gonna talk about this morning really go with the stories we talked about last week. Luke has strung together a few miracle stories and they all really fit together. We talked last week about Jesus calming the storm and then Jesus healing the demoniac and the two stories that we're gonna talk about this morning go right along with those. And so our approach is gonna be very similar in how we come to the text, read the text, think through some questions that maybe pop up in your mind as you read these two miracle stories and then try to sum it up with a lesson about faith. The good news is that we're still in the Gospel of Luke. So the overarching message is exactly the same. Luke, 1910 still governs what we're talking about this morning. The man came to seek and to save the lost. That's the theme verse for the Gospel of Luke. You remember this section of Luke that we're in is a section describing who the Son of Man is, right? Giving us a fuller picture of who is the one, the Son of Man who came to seek us and to save us. And here's the big idea of the passage this morning, very, very simple. Jesus has ultimate authority over disease and death. Who is the Son of Man who came to seek us and save us? He's the one who has authority over disease and over death. That's the big idea. If you have Luke eight located in your Bible, find verse 40. And we're gonna read from verse 40 to the end of the chapter. And then we will discuss what God's word says and what it means for us. Luke eight, verse 40. Now, when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him. They were all waiting for him. And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue. And falling at Jesus' feet, he implored him to come to his house for he had an only daughter about 12 years of age and she was dying. As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years. And though she had spent all of her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment and immediately her discharge of blood ceased. And Jesus said, who was it that touched me? When all denied it, Peter said, master, the crowds surround you and they're pressing in on you. But Jesus said, someone touched me for I perceive the power has gone out from me. And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, falling down before him. And she declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, how she had been immediately healed. And he said to her, daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace. While he was still speaking, someone from the ruler's house came and said, your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the teacher anymore. But Jesus on hearing this answered him. Do not fear, only believe she will be well. When he came to the house, he allowed no one to enter with him except Peter, John, and James, and the father and mother of the child. And all were weeping and mourning for her. But he said, do not weep for she is not dead, but sleeping. And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But taking her by the hand, he called saying, child, arise. And her spirit returned and she got up at once and he directed that something should be given her to eat. And her parents were amazed, but he charged them to tell no one what happened. Let's pray. Father, you are the holy one. And it is an amazing thing that the holy, holy, holy creator and sustainer of the universe has spoken to us in your word. We believe that the words we have just read are your words. We believe that they're true. We believe that they are just as true today as they were 2,000 years ago when Luke wrote them down. And our prayer this morning is that you would speak to us through your word, that you would give us understanding in our minds and that you would give us hearts to receive what you have for us. And Father, we wanna respond this morning in faith and we wanna understand what does it look like to respond to Jesus in faith. We ask these things in his name, amen. The story this morning begins right where we left off last week. Jesus has crossed the Sea of Galilee and I showed you this picture last week. That's an aerial view from Google Earth of the Sea of Galilee and that's sort of a surface level picture of the Sea of Galilee. More than likely, we don't know the exact locations of where Jesus is at at this point in time, but more than likely when you look down on the Sea of Galilee, he's on the upper sort of left hand area up on this top left northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee. And he says to his disciples last week, let's cross the lake and so they cross over going east on the lake and the storm comes up and Jesus calms the storm and they get off and they meet the man with the demons. And then you remember, after he healed that man, he cast the demons out of that man, the people begged him to leave. They begged Jesus to leave their town. So he did, he sent the man back to be a witness in the town, but Jesus got back in his boat and crossed back over the sea and the implication is he came back where he came from, back over to that northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee. And it's interesting, he leaves one side of the Sea of Galilee where people are begging him to leave. And what does Luke say when he gets back over to the northwest side, he says, when he returned the crowds welcomed him for they were all waiting on him. Jesus provokes different reactions in different people and one group of people says, please go away. And so he goes away and the next group of people is waiting on him and they welcome him. And as Luke describes this crowd that welcomes him, he zeros in on a man named Jairus. You can read this in verse 41. He says that this man is a ruler of the synagogue. Verse 41 says, falling at Jesus' feet, okay? You got to get the picture in your mind. A grown man in a crowd of people approaches Jesus and falls at his feet. And he implored him, he begged him to come to his house. Why? Because he had an only daughter about 12 years of age and she was dying. Here's the first question as I read through this passage, it is a little bit strange to me. And the question is, why did Jairus come to Jesus for help? And I pose that question and you say, well, that's a silly question, that's an easy answer. Luke tells us, he had an only daughter, she was 12 years old and she was dying, he needed help. But why did he go to Jesus for help? Think about this, Luke tells us that Jairus is a ruler of the synagogue. That means in his hometown, the synagogue, which you can equate it roughly to a church, the synagogue that he attends has selected him as a corporate body, they've selected him to be in charge of what happens at the synagogue. They voted, cast ballots, put in names in a hat, raised hands, whatever. They said Jairus is the guy that we want to lead the show. He's in charge of setting up the preaching, he's in charge of leading in the prayers, he's in charge of the music, he's in charge of all of the worship activities at the synagogue, he is the ruler of our synagogue. As the ruler of the synagogue, it's either his responsibility to teach and preach, or to find people to teach and preach, and if he goes to find people to teach and preach, which he probably did, he would turn to the Pharisees. He would look to the Pharisees and he would say, could you please teach this Sunday? Could you please preach this Sunday? Could you please lead the prayer this Sunday? In his position, he is friends with the Pharisees. What do we know about the Pharisees and the religious leaders at this point in Luke's gospel? Well, we know chapter four that some of the religious leaders in Nazareth tried to kill Jesus when he preached in their town. We know that in Luke five, they accused Jesus of blasphemy. They understand that he's claiming to forgive sins and no one can do that but God so they accuse him of blasphemy. In Luke six, they begin to make plans to murder Jesus, to harm Jesus, and now we find a man never identified as a Pharisee but friends with them coming to Jesus and he's asking Jesus to help him. He's coming to a man that his friends want to murder and he says, I need your help. I'm begging you for your help. There could be an interesting connection. You remember a few chapters back, we met a Roman centurion. We met a Roman centurion who came to Jesus. You can go back and look and find this. And he comes and he says, I have a servant who's sick and I need you to come heal my servant. And some of the leaders of the Jewish people come with that Roman centurion and they say, listen, this guy's a great guy. He built our synagogue. He's the guy who ponied up the money or the labor or whatever but he was responsible for building our synagogue. If all these stories are happening in Capernaum and a lot of Bible scholars think they are, the centurion built the synagogue that Jairus is the ruler of, an interesting thought. And maybe the centurion says to Jairus, look, I know you guys hate this Jesus guy but I know that you're desperate and I'm telling you what he did for me and you need to go talk to this guy. A little bit of speculation but I think you can connect some of the dots. Either way, put yourself in Jairus shoes. Your daughter is sick. She's dying. You're powerless to help her to make her well. On the one hand, you have close friends who hate Jesus and who are planning to murder him. On the other hand, you possibly have people like this Roman centurion in your ear saying, you need to go talk to that guy for help. And so Jairus, in a moment of desperation, says, look, I know my closest friends at church at the synagogue, they hate Jesus but I'm going. And he goes and in a crowd of people, he gets on his face in the dirt in front of Jesus and he is begging Jesus to help him. Think about it from Jesus's perspective. A man is before you needing your help who is a close associate, probably a friend with the very people seeking to kill you. Your enemy's friend is asking for a favor. What does Jesus do? He goes. Of course he goes. That's the whole point of Luke, right? The son of man came to seek and to save the lost. He didn't look down at the people who had sinned against him and alienated themselves from the father and become cosmic rebels, guilty of cosmic treason because of their sin. He doesn't look at those people in their need and say, well, you know, if we were better friends, I might do something to help you. But the son of man comes to seek and to save the lost, to seek and to save his enemies. And he does the same thing here. Jairus comes begging for help. Jesus says, of course I will go and they head off towards the house. As they go, Luke says the crowd is pressing in, okay? You're thinking like Jairus, your daughter is sick, you're desperate, you come to Jesus for help. He agrees to go. The crowd is in the way. If Jairus is anything like me, he's ready to just start shoving people, right? People are trying to come to Jesus. They want favors too. Jairus is asking for a favor. Well, all these other people in the crowd want a favor too. They have problems, they have issues, they have needs, they have sick people. They're asking for Jesus for his time, for his attention. And Jairus, you can just almost picture him in the crowd, just pulling Jesus through this crowd. We gotta hurry, we gotta hurry, we gotta hurry. And in the midst of that, a woman sneaks up behind Jesus and she's been sick for 12 years. If you've ever battled any kind of serious chronic illness, you can somewhat maybe put your shoes in this woman's position. As long as Jairus's daughter has been alive, this woman has been sick. And she sneaks up behind Jesus thinking, if I've heard of this guy, if I can just touch the edge of his robe, I'll be made well. And she sneaks up behind him and she touches his robe and Luke says instantly she was healed. And that's an interesting thing about this woman. You remember, Luke, we know from one of Paul's letters, Luke is a physician. Paul mentions Luke in one of his letters at the end and he says, Luke, the beloved physician, the beloved doctrine. So Luke tells us in this passage, he says, look, this woman spent all her money on physicians. She did not get well. That's a hard thing for Luke to admit. This woman spent all her money. She became bankrupt, looking for a cure. There's one detail Luke doesn't tell us and Mark does tell us. Not only did she spend all her money, not only did she not get better, but she actually got worse. Luke does leave that out. Spend all her money on physicians. She doesn't get better and she only gets worse. And she touches Jesus and immediately she's healed. And in her mind, she thinks, I just wanted to touch him and then I want to sneak away. I don't want to be in the limelight. He looks busy. I don't need his time. I just want to touch him. She's well, she thinks she can sneak away and Jesus won't allow it. Jesus asks a question. And this is my second question. Why did Jesus ask who touched him? Why did he ask the question? Peter, who is sometimes vocal, thought it was a stupid question. Peter says, Jesus, are you kidding me right now? There's 800 people touching you. There's a mob of folks. What do you mean who touched you? We've all touched you. We're just moving through like cattle here. What are you talking about? We think it's stupid for a different reason. We think we're smarter than Peter. So we look at the question and we say, well, didn't he know? I mean, he just cast the demons out of the guy and sent him into the pigs and he was powerful over that and he just calmed the waves and the storm and he had control over that. All the amazing things he's done, doesn't he know who touched him and who just got healed? And the answer is, yeah, he did know. And he's drawing this woman out. He's not exposing her and he's not embarrassing her, but he is drawing her out. And he's giving her this opportunity to make her faith public. And we're gonna talk about that here in just a little bit. So he draws the woman out. Now, don't forget that Jairus is standing there, right? He's already been delayed because of the crowd. Dragging Jesus through, we gotta hurry, we gotta hurry. She's sick, she's dying, we gotta go. Look, you said you would go, come on, please, please, please. And now Jesus stops to talk with a woman. And they have this back and forth. And there's Jairus waiting, waiting, thinking, whoever touched him, please come out. We are hurrying, this is urgent. I don't have time for this, who touched him? You can just see Jairus and the impatience and the anxiety. And the woman comes out and Jesus looks at the woman and he says to her, you're healed because you touched me. That what he says is your faith has made you well. And we'll come back to that in just a minute. Your faith has made you well. And as he's talking with this woman, as they're having this back and forth, look at verse 49, while Jesus was still speaking to the woman, still having this back and forth. Someone from the ruler's house came, Jairus's house, and said, your daughter's dead. Don't trouble him anymore. Your daughter is dead. Now put yourself back in Jairus's position. You got on your face in front of a guy you weren't really sure about to begin with because your friends want to kill him. You begged him to come help you. He said he would come. Then he just sort of took his time. And the crowd was in the way and the lady is talking to him. And you look at this and you say, what was Jairus feeling at this point? Was he frustrated with Jesus? Maybe. Was he frustrated with the crowd? Maybe. Was he frustrated with the woman? Maybe. Was he just devastated? Was he just in total shock? We don't know. But we know that Jesus hears this. He's talking to the woman. He hears the news. He looks at Jairus and he says three things. You ready? Don't be afraid. Only believe she will be well. Don't be afraid. Believe in me. I promise you that she will be well. And so they go. When they get there, Luke tells us that only three guys and the mom and the dad get to go in, which is my next question. Why did Jesus only let Peter, James, and John into the girl's room? We know from other passages that these are sort of an inner circle in Jesus' disciples. This is sort of the leadership. Peter, James, and John. Only these guys get to go up on the mountain of transfiguration. Everyone else stays down. Only these guys get to go farther into the garden of Gethsemane to pray with Jesus on the night when he was betrayed. So this is sort of his inner circle. And here's the fact of the matter. The girl's room was probably not huge. Probably not as big as your master bedroom in your house. Probably a very small room. And so Jesus says, look, we can't all go in there. I'll take Peter, James, John, mom and dad, and they go in. And they go in to the room. And Jesus says to those who are there, verse 52, do not weep, she's not dead, but she's sleeping. Don't weep, she's not dead, she's sleeping. And look at verse 53. They left at him. Who left at him? Peter, James, John, mom and dad. Not like, ha, ha, ha, that's very funny, but like, really? We brought you here for that. We rushed through the crowd and all that for you to just come and to state the opposite of the obvious. She is dead. Next question, why did Jesus say the girl was sleeping? I was surprised how many commentaries, Bible commentaries, I opened up this week. And I told you about some silly commentaries last week. So I won't give you all those names again, but how many commentaries I opened up that said, she really was sleeping. The people just made a mistake. Maybe they just couldn't find a pulse or maybe she was breathing very low or maybe she was in some kind of coma, they couldn't wake her up. She was really just asleep. And Jesus comes in and he offers a different diagnosis of the situation and Jesus sort of knows everything, right? And so he looks at it and he says, "Oh, come on guys, don't calm down." She's not really dead, she's just sleeping and we're gonna wake her up. I think that's ridiculous. I think it's ridiculous to think that we, 2,000 years later, on the other side of the world, can look back at this story and say all of these people who knew what dead bodies looked like, felt like, smelled like, all of it, that we know better than them whether she was alive or dead. How arrogant would we be to say that we're in a better position to diagnose the problem? And here's the thing, when Jesus says she is not dead, she's asleep. He's not giving a different diagnosis, he's giving a different perspective. And he's saying to them, "Listen, if you know me, "if I get factored into your equation, "then death is not final like you think it is. "It's not the end. "If you know me and I'm factored into your life, "then death is just sort of like going to sleep "and eventually you're gonna wake back up." This is the one who has the authority to seek and to save the lost one who has authority over death or is being diseased, and he looks at this dead girl and he says, "I can wake her up, just believe." And so he bends down and he says to the little girl, child, arise, verse 55, her spirit returned, it returned because she was dead, spirit returned and she got up at once. He directed that something should be given her to eat and her parents were amazed. And then here comes another question. He charged them not to tell or to tell no one what happened. Question five, why did Jesus tell the parents not to tell? That's a tricky one, that's a tricky one. You gotta think, you gotta put your thinking cap on. On the one hand, you say, "Okay, did he not want anyone "to know that the little girl was alive again? "Did he expect the parents to keep her locked up in the room "for the rest of her days?" Probably not, right, let's scratch that off the list. Bad idea. Say, "Okay, so all these people are outside crying. "The funeral has really begun in a sense." And Jesus says to the parents and Peter, James and John, let's not talk about this. The implication is Jesus wants everyone to walk out of the room and say, "Well, I guess she was sleeping." She woke up, Jesus woke her up. He said, "Well, I wouldn't Jesus want the credit for this?" And then I told you that this story goes with the stories we looked at last week. You remember Jesus in the demoniac? He comes, the demon falls down, cast the demons out of the pigs, pigs over the cliff. And then at the end of the story, the man says what to Jesus? Please let me go with you. Please, please, please, please, let me follow along with you guys. And Jesus says what? Nope, I want you to go home and do what? Tell everyone, you go home and you tell everyone what God has done for you. And now he raises this girl from the dead and he says to her parents, "Don't tell a soul." It's between you and me. You look at that and you say, "What in the world? "Why would Jesus tell these people?" It's not the only time he does this in the gospels. Why would he do this? I showed you the picture of the lake earlier. When he crossed over to the east side of the lake, he went into Gentile territory. He went to a group of people who were in no way, shape, or form, looking for a Messiah. And you remember, those people begged Jesus to leave. And so he left, but he didn't leave them without witness. He sent the man back to tell them what God had done. Back on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee is Jewish territory. And Jairus is most certainly a Jew and he is involved in leading Jewish worship at the synagogue and all the people outside crying are Jews. And they're all anticipating, excited about a Messiah. Here's the problem. Everyone out there crying, they're waiting for the Messiah, looking for the Messiah. The problem is in their mind, he's gonna be a general. He's gonna be a conqueror. He's gonna lead a political movement. He's gonna overthrow the Romans. And Jesus in this moment just very simply says, "I have not come to be their kind of Messiah. "I'm not here to be who they want me to be. "I haven't come to raise an army. "I haven't come to lead a political movement. "I have come to seek and to save the lost." And if you go out there and tell everybody that I just raised this kid from the dead, it's gonna be a mob of people who wanna make me a king in their image and I want nothing to do with that. And so he says to them, "For the time being, you don't tell. "You keep this quiet." Why? Because he wasn't going to fall into the trap of the people. He wasn't gonna be the kind of Messiah they wanted him to be. They wanted a general, a political leader, a king. Jesus says, "I've come to seek and to save the lost." That means I'm gonna have to die on a cross, not raise an army. So don't tell. What Jesus wants from everyone in this story is not their allegiance and their willingness to sign up and join his military movement, his revolt against Rome. He just wants faith. I'm not asking for your help. I'm not looking for you to sign up and pick up a sword. I'm not asking for your vote. I just want you to believe me from beginning to end. That's what he's asking of these people. Believe me, have faith in me. And so we'll end with this question and we'll move through these quickly. What is genuine faith? What is the kind of faith that Jesus is looking for? In Jairus and his wife, in Peter, James, John, and the woman and you and me. What is genuine faith as we see it in this passage? Five ideas, six ideas, excuse me. Number one, genuine faith is humble in approach. Jairus on his face, the woman on her face. Most people today in the United States of America who are loosely Christianized think I'm gonna come to God standing up with something in my hands. I'm gonna come to God and offer him something. You know people think this way because you invite him to church and they say, well, you know, I need to take care of a few things in my life. I need to get a few things squared away. And then maybe I'll do that. What they're saying is I'm not gonna come groveling in the dirt. I'm gonna come standing up straight with something in my hands to bring to God. Guess what? He's not interested. Guess what? You don't have anything he needs. It's folly. And the woman got it out of her desperation. She got it and Jairus got it. And Jesus is saying, look, genuine faith is not faith coming to bring me something. It's faith coming down on your knees. It is humble in its approach. Number two, genuine faith is focused on Christ. It is Christ-centered. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus is the object of genuine faith. Can we please be done with the notion that anyone who believes in a higher power is a quote-unquote believer? That anyone who quote-unquote believes that there is some sort of supreme being in heaven has a genuine relationship with that supreme being. It's not true, biblically. Jesus says to these people over and over, you need to have faith in me, in me, in me, John 14-6. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me, you must have faith in me. Elsewhere in the book of Acts, we read that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we can be saved. No other name. If you wanna have true faith, genuine faith, it has to be centered on Jesus. Paul tells Timothy, as he's beginning to figure out how to be a pastor, he says, Timothy, don't forget, there is only one mediator between God and man and that's Jesus Christ. Your faith must be centered on Jesus. It must be, it must be. If it's not, you say, well, I believe that there's a God in heaven, I believe that there's a higher power. It's not genuine faith. It's not saving faith. Genuine faith is focused on Christ. Number three, genuine faith does not require ritual. Does not require ritual. I'm thinking about the woman here. In her mind, she thinks, if I just touch him, if I touch the edge of his robe, there's some sort of power in it, there's some sort of magic in it, that's what I need to be healed. And to her credit, she comes believing that Jesus can change her life and she is healed, right? But I hope you see that Jesus corrects her theology at the end of their encounter. He doesn't leave her thinking that his robe is somehow magical and that when he dies, they need to divvy it up and make sure you get a little peace. He says to the woman, hey, listen, your faith made you well. Not some sort of ritual that you went through or did, not some little ceremony that you think somehow has spiritual power, it's your faith. Christians do all kinds of crazy things, ritual-wise. Some think, well, you gotta be baptized. Baptism is the ritual that sort of brings you in. The Lord's Supper, it's taking communion that is the magical thing or its penance or its confession or it's buying this sort of relic sort of thing, this object that has spiritual power, is going to the holy lands. Look, that's one that Protestants make a mistake on a lot of time. If you could just go to the holy lands, then you'd have, you would see it, you would be there, your faith would be so much deeper. What you're saying is there's something magical in that and going to a piece of real estate, Jesus says, no, there's not. It's your faith that made you well. It's your faith that saves you, not ritual. Genuine faith, number four, it is always public. Always public. Again, he doesn't expose the woman, he doesn't embarrass the woman, he doesn't just turn around and say, hey, hey, come out here, come out here. You're gonna lead a small group Bible study. Come on, I want you to tell everybody what just happened. But he most certainly asks the question until she comes forward. Jesus was not budging off of that piece of ground until she came forward. I'm waiting, who touched me? He's drawing this woman out. In the United States, sometimes we talk so much about, do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? I hope you do. But sometimes we talk so much about that, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, that we give people the impression that our faith in Jesus is a private thing. It's not, it never has been, it never will be. Genuine faith is not private. It is always public, always. Genuine faith, what does it look like? Number five, it endures. It endures. Jairus was a desperate man, and he was very relieved when Jesus came with him, but he was very frustrated at this delay. We know he was because he was human. He was brokenhearted, he was angry, he was confused, he was in shock when the messenger came and said your daughter is dead. And in essence what Jesus is saying to Jairus and what he's saying to you is, until your faith has the opportunity to endure, you don't really even know if it's genuine or not. Of course Jairus had faith when Jesus said, let's go, I'll do it. But in the moment of trial and testing, that's when Jesus said, listen, endure, believe, only believe me. Don't be afraid, genuine faith endures. And lastly, closely related, but important is this, genuine faith is steadfast in hopeless situations. Hopeless situations. These were people at the end of their rope. The lady was out of money and she was not getting better, she was getting worse. Jairus had nowhere else to turn and eventually got the worse news that any parent could receive. And into both of those situations, Jesus says, please believe me. I know that it looks hopeless. I know that it feels hopeless. I know that you don't see how it's gonna work out in the end. Please, in the midst of that, in the midst of the feeling of despair and hopelessness, believe. I don't know what your circumstances are like this morning. Maybe your life is fantastic. Maybe it's never been better. Maybe things are going your way, everything's wonderful, everything's rosy, great. But maybe it's not. Maybe your circumstances are not ideal. Maybe you have struggles and doubts and concerns and worries. Maybe you're even facing a situation or two that seems hopeless. Here's what Jesus wants from you. Regardless of your circumstance, regardless of your situation, he wants you to believe. So what does that mean, believe in Jesus? It means this, that you come to Jesus humbly, not with something in your hands, but on your knees. It means that you are focused on Jesus, not just God in general, vague, vanilla, sort of ethereal notion of who God is, but you're focused on Jesus Christ. That you're not trusting in ritual, that you believe faith alone is enough, that your faith is public. Yes, it's personal, but it's certainly not private. It's your faith endures, even in a hopeless situation. Let me pray for you and we're gonna continue to worship this morning. Father, we're grateful for your word and we're grateful for the true stories of Jesus that we read in the Gospel of Luke. What an amazing thing that the Son of Man came to seek us and to save us. Not because of anything that we have done, not because of any good thing that we can offer you, but while we were your enemies, while we were dead in our trespasses and sins, Jesus came to seek us and to save us. Father, we read these stories and we see clearly that what you want from us is not payback, it's not payment, it's not merit, but it's just faith. And so we come as your people this morning humbly and we confess that we don't have any good thing to bring to you. We find our hope in Jesus and in Jesus alone, in Jesus alone, in Jesus alone, in Jesus alone. Father, we want to have faith that endures. We want to have faith that is steadfast regardless of the hopelessness that we see in front of us. Father, we want to be bold in making our faith public. And Father, we don't want to come trusting in anything that we can do, any ritual, any act, any anything. We just want to put our faith firmly and solely in Jesus. Father, as we continue in worship, we pray that the name of Jesus would be lifted up. We pray that you would strengthen our faith. And Father, for those who are here this morning who do not have genuine faith, we pray that you would create it in their heart, that you would draw them to yourself. And we pray and we ask it in the name of Jesus, amen.